Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday March 20, 2016 @06:30PM
from the simple-as-that-eh? dept.

reifman writes: As posted earlier, Amazon's growth and predominantly male hiring has made dating in Seattle incredibly difficult for everyone. Two Amazon employees, Becca Goldman and Mahvish Gazipura, recently launched DateADev to help coworkers optimize their dating profiles: 'at Amazon [we're] surrounded by software developers and project managers all the time, we just noticed their need. We talk to them all the time about their frustrations with dating.' Goldman's gone on more than 500 dates in the past three years. 'Her experience ... helps her quickly assess an online profile of a potential partner.' Rather than drive its employees into moonlighting, Amazon could just start hiring more women.

500 dates in three years? This is why Seattle is ideal for Amazon's growth and why they don't hire more women. If they spend so much time dating and distracting their colleagues , how much time can they be spending on coding?

Get back to work sweetheart!

PS, from a current suffering Seattleite, 500 dates in 3 years is probably par for the course for woman of middling quality. Punished by choice the darlings. Perhaps we men of Seattle are socially inept, but from my experience I encounter single women way t

This assertion that corporations should allow their employees to have lives outside of their companies is completely antithetical to American values and should be banned as hate speech. I hope you get locked up and waterboarded in Guantanamo for saying such a thing. Absolutely disgusting.

500 dates??!! WTF?!! Be less picking and maybe try talking to them on the phone for a few minutes before you even bother to meet for coffee or a drink. I know a couple of my younger coworkers go on lots of dates for the free dinner but they are kind of tacky like that.

Personally, I stick to the under $10s rule for the first date. Unless you just live in the most boringest place in the world, there are usually enough free places to go that work perfectly for a first date. Spending money is not required and i

Take it a step further and don't pay for the first date at all. Still keep it cheap so that you're not using them for $$$, if they didn't bring any money because they were just using you then you can still pay, and if there is a next time then go somewhere a little nicer and pay. After that try to keep it alternating who pays so that nobody is getting used for money.

If women *did* like dating engineers (in America), this problem would resolve itself.

Of course, there are reasons why women don't like dating engineers:

1) Social myths and stigmas about engineers.2) The realities behind the social myths and stigmas about engineers.3) Engineers tend to be introverts and beta-males, and as such they don't exude the sense of power that makes men attractive to women (despite their wealth).

These are social problems. They need to be fixed by social means. Another online dating service won't accomplish that.

You do know that telling people about this place is going to drive more traffic to it.

At this point the signals completely lost in the noise anyway.

It's one of the few places anywhere where men don't get shamed for wanting to have sex.

Odd. I've never had that problem. Nor any of the other problems that TRPers whine about. Then again I don't act like women are vending machines dispensing sex after enough nice guy tokens are entered or any of the other random problems they have. Hell my female friends never shamed me for wanting sex. (But That means I also had female friends, a concept beyond most TRPers).

TRP cured my bad back. True story. I walk taller since spending time there and my 20 year back problem has disappeared. I don't go there much anymore because the right wingers have taken the place over and there's only so many times you can read "cultural Marxism" before you think "oh piss off".

You've clearly not spent any real time there if you think TRP is full of nice guy types. The underlying attitude is to treat women badly not to orbit them in the hope of some attention.

There are all those high school graduates who think they deserve the title due to being able to cut and paste other people's PHP.That bunch and those with an actual degree, but not in engineering, leads to a pile of social myths and stigmas about engineers. For one thing there are a greater percentage of women among engineering graduates than in CS and related degrees so engineers are better socialised than IT types in general.As for the second point directly above, also tr

There is no such thing as an actual engineer. There are many different engineering fields, and not all of them are "professional engineers".

Computer Engineer is the name of a degree, they tend to be programmer types with more hardware experience. These are the types you have code your drivers. They tend to have experience with actual electronic circuits, but this is not necessary.

Meh, good engineers are confident at the very least...
However software engineers are the only exception to that. The funny bit then is that the closest related field (electronics) generally already is a huge difference. Was really noticeable in college: the IT engineering students were playing games on their laptop in the cafeteria while we were hanging out with the (mostly female) chemistry majors.
And then about the *hire more women* stereotype. Confidence is a major asset for technical staff anywher

These are all correct, and this is why engineers should look for women from Asia to date, rather than dating American-born (and especially Caucasian) women. Women from Asia have a totally different outlook on engineers, and see them as good, stable partners with very good income potential. Asian women also tend not to care too much about "alpha males" or men who try to emulate Hollywood stereotypes and want men who are loyal and good providers for their families.

Are you Asian by birth, or by heritage? There's a big difference, and it's absolutely correct for me to make generalizations about the culture of your birth and upbringing. If you were born and raised in America, then my comments about Asian women may not apply to you (esp. if you're 3rd generation or something), and you're really not "Asian", any more than I'm "Irish" or "German" (I've never been there but my ancestors came from there a long time ago).

I used to live near NYC, and I disagree about the diversity of industries there. As a software engineer (with a focus on embedded work), the only stuff I saw there was financial, and web development. I did interview at NYSE (mainly just so I could say that I did), but after seeing what it was like had no interest in working there. Some recruiters tried to get me to interview at Bloomberg LP too, but there was no way I'd work in that environment. Outside of finance, I did NOT see much software engineerin

If you're hiring women solely so that the male workers have someone to date, it's just asking for trouble. Anyone who's ever seen a workplace relationship turn bad knows what I'm talking about.
Also, from what I've heard about Amazon, it's not the best place to work in terms of work-life balance. I don't think Amazon is actively avoiding women so much as the only people stupid enough to sign up for something like that are young 20-something men who don't have a family yet or the experience to realize what they're signing up for.

If you're hiring women solely so that the male workers have someone to date, it's just asking for trouble

It solves a few problems and I think you are adding meaning that was not actually there.

In short, monocultures suck. Having someone from outside your home town avoids the embarrassment of local slang on your website confusing the fuck out of visitors and excluding half the human race from consideration narrows perspective and can lead to fuckups. Look at how out of touch some people in politics are on

it simply won't work. I've lived in Seattle for eleven years, and I've only met one single female that's within -10 and +5 years of my own age. In the current company I work for, there's about 320 men and 80 women, and no unmarried women. I don't know where they're hiding.

This. After living in South Lake Union in Seattle not far from Amazon for two years and going out three or more nights a week, I haven't met a single unattached female. There just aren't any around here.

If you think Seattle is bad, you should try Bellevue. It's about ten miles from Seattle and on the other side of Lake Washington. It's a great city with amazing tech jobs, found a new job three different times in less than a week, but I don't think I've ever seen a girl in a bar or club that wasn't already with a guy.

Went to a club there last Saturday, and there were literally no women other than the waitresses. I've lived here for twenty-two years, and not a one of my male friends has had a girlfriend, much less married. I love the job options here, and I'm saving enough to retire when I'm fifty, but it sucks being alone with zero chance of finding someone. I've tried Plenty of Fish and match.com. After sending hundreds of messages, I've never even gotten a date. I've got a flashy car (Ferrari 360, older but still nice) and a 22-story condo overlooking Lake Washington and downtown Seattle, but I haven't even met a girl to even try to impress.

Perhaps you're looking for the wrong type of girl - not all girls are going to be impressed by your Ferarri, plus I imagine that unless a girl is particularly athletic, she's not going to want to climb 22 flights of stairs from your livingroom to the bedroom.

This is Seattle: many studies have shown that it has a severe lack of single women. His problem is likely not so much him, but the lack of a dating pool. You're assuming that he actually touts his Ferrari and condo in his personals ads; that may or may not be true, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he doesn't, and he's smartly waiting until he picks up a date before she sees he's driving an older Ferrari. I haven't been all that successful with dating either, but even I know e

This is Seattle: many studies have shown that it has a severe lack of single women. His problem is likely not so much him, but the lack of a dating pool. You're assuming that he actually touts his Ferrari and condo in his personals ads; that may or may not be true, but I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he doesn't, and he's smartly waiting until he picks up a date before she sees he's driving an older Ferrari. I haven't been all that successful with dating either, but even I know enough to not post pictures of my car or talk about my car in my profiles (though I don't have a Ferrari or anything terribly flashy either, just a very sensible but still quick Mazda3 with a bike rack). If you want a quality woman, you have to show pictures of yourself that show what you really look like, and show you doing fun things or going fun places she might enjoy (but don't overdo it with cliché crap like Machu Pichu), not photos showing off your possessions or your washboard abs.

He brought up his Ferrari and Condo here, as if they were some kind of selling point -- he's definitely bringing it up with women.

As for 22 flights of stairs, have you never heard of an elevator????

Well, I'll admit that I've never known anyone with a 22 story condo, do those always come with elevators?

He misspoke (miswrote): his condo is not 22 stories tall, it's on the 22nd story of a high-rise condo building. That really should be obvious.

And I disagree about the condo and Ferrari. You may be right, but you may not, there's no way to tell unless he responds here to fill in the gaps. While I don't have a swanky condo or a Ferrari, I do think I have a decent setup to offer the right woman, but I also don't come out and show anything off right in my profile, I leave that for them to find out if they in

This will create a similar situation that we have with education.A child grows up going to school.Goes to college.Become a teacher.Who teaches studentswho goes to collegeand becomes a teacher.This creates part of the problem with education where there are still a lot of Victorian values and methods going on, because there is little outside influence in their experience.

Now with Amazon what this will do is match Employees, who work with Amazon values, who will date and possible have children. And portrait su

The bad thing about hiring quotas by any determinate like race or gender or any pool with a smaller population, is that ALLOF THE COMPANIES are trying to generally do the same thing.

So lets say Amazon does succeed in doubling the hiring rate of women - doesn't that mean there are a LOT of companies now short their "share" of women? In fact is it any wonder that small companies are so devoid of women when so many large companies are trying so desperately to hire women? Centralizing technical women in a small number of companies in fact seems like a terribly bad idea to me and is probably exacerbating all of the technical culture issues people have noticed (which must be said are rooted in Silicon Valley and not nearly so bad outside that echo chamber).

That's pretty well how the outsourcing goes - fill a technical position with a random person in India or somewhere and then the client of the outsourcing company has to train them on the job.Maybe we should try that at home and actually start training people again. Hire people (men and women) to do a technical job and train them to do it instead of hoping that a resume is not a lie.

If by "random person" you mean some kid who has spent a few years learning to program in some Indian tech course, then yes. They don't just train them from scratch, they start from a base of SOME understanding.

Some understanding? Sadly that is being optimistic.Also there are plenty of people with more than K-12 that just need a few weeks to get up to speed on some of the things where HR filter based on years of experience and somebody else doing the training.

A sign that half the human race doesn't want to work in an industry is a bit of a sign that things are fucked up. I've seen more women working in mines than IT lately.Quotas are an act of force feeding the situation and assuming that the only problems are in hiring, so a quick attempted fix that makes people annoyed instead of doing something about the feedback loop that has been driving women out of IT for years.

If a woman buys a book on IoT or Spark, and she's young (based on her music purchases) and has weight proportional to height (based on clothing buys), you've got her email address, so send her a nice followup note.

As a male dev who has interviewed and knows people at Amazon, the problem isn't lack of an app. After I went out to talk with them for a day, I came away with the impression that there are a large number of really arrogant and pushy people working there. Undoubtedly, my personal experience isn't statistical representation of the whole company, but I wasn't very impressed with them as people. They seemed stressed, hurried, egotistical, and self-centered. I didn't want to work there for money, so I could imagine that few women would want to date people like that for free.

Anecdote: If you go on a date and the date goes poorly, the person may have been a jerk. If you go on 10 dates and they all go poorly, chances are you are actually the jerk. If nobody at Amazon can land a date, what does that tell you? A lack of girls in Seattle? For being so smart, you seem pretty slow...

It sounds counterintuitive to shy programmer males, but pushy, arrogant men are in great demand by women. It's sad but unfortunately true.

"I could imagine that few women would want to date people like that for free. "

You are so, so wrong, my friend. You're looking at it from your own perspective, not from a woman's perspective. I hope you can get the wisdom you seek to improve your chances with women, because you have wrongheaded ideas about what women are looking for in a man.:(

I hope you can get the wisdom you seek to improve your chances with women, because you have wrongheaded ideas about what women are looking for in a man.:(

I have been with the same girl for over 20 years. We are quite happily married, I really don't need to improve my chances with women. Also, women don't want pushy arrogant men, many seem to like men who are confident, bold, and decisive, but nobody with a healthy psychology gravitates towards people who are belittling and abusive. I think you might b

So you've been out of the market for 20 years and have no idea what's going on. Thanks for letting me know you don't need any help and I should help others instead. Nowhere did anyone say 'abusive' until you brought it up. Please stop giving advice on what young women want from men, you have no idea what you're talking about.

"So you've been out of the market for 20 years and have no idea what's going on."

Women don't work or evolution the way your iPhone does. No: women 20 years ago, or 200 years ago, or 2000 years ago for that matter are not any different than today's. Neither are men. Yes, some external looks do change, just like you can put a new cover to your old mobile, but the motherboard and the WiFi chip stays the same.

However, society changes, and so does the situation a woman finds herself in, and therefore what the woman looks for in a partner. It's also more socially acceptable for women to date a lot of men than it used to be, so the woman could be looking for a fun date (whatever that is for her) or something longer-term. (Disclaimer: don't look to me for dating advice. I got just successful enough to find one good one, which is all I need.)

Please stop giving advice on what young women want from men, you have no idea what you're talking about.

...Or based on evidence of a long, successful relationship, I know exactly what I am talking about. I think you are the one here who needs help, you have some, um, 'interesting' ideas about how women think.

And, 'pushy and arrogant' == abusive. Perhaps not in the 'slap a woman around' sense of the word, but someone who values themselves above others and subtly belittles others is abusive. There is a

After I went out to talk with them for a day, I came away with the impression that there are a large number of really arrogant and pushy people working there. Undoubtedly, my personal experience isn't statistical representation of the whole company, but I wasn't very impressed with them as people. They seemed stressed, hurried, egotistical, and self-centered.

I have to call BS on this. What you're describing is typical American culture. American women, being part of that same culture, should be happy to da

They're not only not forbidding coworkers to date one another, but actually encouraging it? How is this not a sexual harassment disaster waiting to happen? Or is it all hunky dory because a woman came up with the idea?

That being said, two questions jump to mind. One, I heard that Amazon employees sign contracts that every idea they might have, even if unrelated to their primary job, is the property of Amazon (it is Seattle, so I think the contract is enforceable). Does that hold true here? And secondly, just hire more women?? I never heard of Jeff Reifman, but he sounds like a class act, NOT. His chief tip? "Offer larger signing bonuses for women". Is that even legal?

I have Karma to burn, so I'll ask a question that has been on my mind for a while - is gender balance (in any industry) a goal? Or is it a means to a goal. I often hear "We need more women in Tech", but I don't understand why that is a goal by itself. It might be more clear to say "we need smart people in Tech, and smart women are turned away from STEM, so we need to fix this". Because there might be other ways of achieving the second goal (irrespective of gender), while the only way to achieve the first is to make the hire ratio even.

I have Karma to burn, so I'll ask a question that has been on my mind for a while - is gender balance (in any industry) a goal? Or is it a means to a goal.

That's a very reasonable question, but the answer is "neither". The goal is equal opportunity; quotas don't solve that problem. A doctor would point out that they are treating one symptom while the patient is dying of the disease.

Bullocks. There are plenty of smart women in STEM. It's a personality thing, the more egg headier the workplace, the less likely people are going to take half thought-through ideas or concepts or "emotions." Plenty of smart men and women don't run in STEM circles because they're too quick to conclusions or decisions and don't think about the implications. There are also different kinds of "smart" - a mechanic with 30 years of experience probably knows some thin

I suppose it's something that an employer is sympathetic to what we might call lifestyle deficiencies of its employees, but what are they planning to add to the equation? Matchmaking is thousands of years old.

Maybe they think they can do it "on a computer" and get a patent, but I'm pretty sure there's some prior art.

As a divorcee living near a city full of a glut of these "upwardly mobile career women", this is basically my experience. It would be really nice to date a marry a woman with a good career so we can both enjoy sharing our high incomes, but the problem seems to be that these women, even when they're around 40 years old and never married, have ridiculous expectations. They seem to want a guy that looks and dresses like a GQ model, has never been married, is over 6 feet tall, has a high-income job, has a str

From what I've seen, the countries which would be really nice to live in (western Europe) aren't very easy for Americans to move to. The countries which are easy to move to are 3rd-world and not places where you're going to get a high-paying job programming.

Let's see; 500 dates in, say, 1200 days comes out to another date every 2.4 days.Assuming that a date often consists of dinner and maybe a movie, we'll say it occupies about 4 hours per date.If the average person sleeps 7 hours per day, during those 1200 days, she was awake 20,400 hours.Of those waking hours, we'll estimate that she worked approx 8500 hours, leaving 11,900 hours for everything not sleep or work related.Take away at least 2 hours per day for various daily, unavoidable activities like showers, breakfast, dressing, cleaning... So that's another 2400 hours.That makes 9500 hours that might fit into the category of discretionary time.The dates occupied 2000 hours, or roughly 21% of all her discretionary time.I'd call that throwing yourself into your work...

Don't forget the money angle. Assume middle class or better partners. 30 bucks spent on her per date equates to 5k a year on entertainment she didn't have to spend. If she went upper class with her preferences she could be making 15k a year extra.

Let's see; 500 dates in, say, 1200 days comes out to another date every 2.4 days.Assuming that a date often consists of dinner and maybe a movie, we'll say it occupies about 4 hours per date.

If she's doing a 4 hour dinner+movie date for every first date, no wonder she's frustrated - when online dating, a first date should be something quick and easy to end early if it's not going well -- like drinks or coffee, so when it's clear that the date is not working out, you can bail early before investing too much time.

That said, she should be spending most of her time in screening profiles and sending a few emails to figure out basic compatibility, even a couple phone calls. Once she's done that, the

According to her own comments in the (comments section of the) article, the dates were not serious and were deliberate research for this start-up. So rather than simply sucking at dating she merely sucks at not using people. Not entirely sure if that's better or worse?

As far as doing work which is engineering... you need the socially awkward culture. And like it or not for the most part that isn't women. That's a different kind of intelligence. Being polite and politically correct is not what you need in engineering. You need straightforwardness. You need to be sure of what you say and not be afraid to say it. You can't be afraid to be wrong.

What could be possible is social, speaking and communications training. And while the men would also benefit from social training I think women women would benefit more by adapting to and understanding the social conventions of men. Learn to be politically incorrect. Love ideas and what you do; not people. Be problem focused. Male nerds don't necessarily like each other; it's more we only tolerate each other. We are rude to each other and we are all headstrong.

I very strongly disagree with you. It's perfectly possible to be firm, honest and technically strong without resorting to rudeness, "political incorrect" stuff or hiding rudeness being the pretense of politeness. Compare for example:

"Why the Fuck did you make that design? Are you a Fucking retarded fag? "

Versus:

"Your design is unworkable because self sealing stem bolts won't hold up under those conditions."

The second one is not rude, not politically incorrect and more useful than the first. Rudeness is oft

500 'dates' in 3 years?What's a date then?Going out for drink or a meal?Going out for drink or meal with someone of the opposite sex (or gender spectrum)?The above but with potential romantic considerations?And does two dates with the same person count? After all, 500 dates with the same three people doesn't say much about your ability to find dates.

Is it really that bad an idea? And for all the times you've seen it, was it between actual coworkers?

At a small company, yeah, I can see this advice making a lot of sense. Everyone knows everyone, you probably work at least somewhat closely with the potential dating partner, so if it goes bad (which it likely will, most relationships fail before getting to marriage, and then half of those fail too), it's really going to affect your work environment.

Is it really that bad an idea? And for all the times you've seen it, was it between actual coworkers?

Yes, and yes. Don't do it.

-

I guess if she turns out to be a psycho and accuses you of sexual harassment when you dump her, but really, the changes of that are probably pretty low.

They aren't as low as you might think...breakups happen, and having an HR department in common can lead to some pretty ugly stuff happening. I've seen vindictive people use this as a way to get revenge and it's never a good thing no matter how it turns out, even if you're totally cleared of any wrongdoing.

Seriously, you're welcome to take your chances but decades of experience have shown me it's usually a bad idea.:(